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Welcome to Snarkfest

Welcome to my snarky corner of the web. Join me as I discuss everything from wine to chocolate. There may be a few other topics mixed in there too. I talk a bunch about my amazing offspring, 19 and 17. I sometimes go on and on about my secret crush on the amazing Mike Rowe. I talk about things that irritate me or things that make me happy. Sometimes I just talk to hear myself talk. Feedback is always appreciated but please make sure it's respectable. No nudity or profanity. I'm the only one allowed to be profane. But any and all snark is welcome and appreciated!

Thursday, January 31, 2013

The amazing Jenn at My Daily Jenn-isms AND the ever fantastic Kimbo at It Is Interesting To Note have both bestowed upon me the Liebster Award. Awards are given to spread the word about bloggers and I'm all about spreading the love. And the snark. I'm going to break the rules for now (because what are they gonna do, hurt my feelings?) and just answer the questions I've been asked to answer, and then post those same questions to YOU, dear readers, to answer in my comments section. Are you ready? Pay attention because there are a bunch of questions and you WILL be quizzed on them. First up, Kimbo's questions:

1. What household chore do you hate the most? Ironing. I'd rather rinse my mouth out with bleach, spit it on the floor and scrub the floor with bare hands full of paper cuts than to iron

2. What was the last movie, TV show or book that made you cry or tear up? The Green Mile, Sunday night on TNT.

3. What’s the best/worst gift you’ve ever given/received? Worst gift: My husband knows what that is and if I bring it up yet again, I'm likely to be sleeping in the guest room. Let's just say the Postal Service is involved. Best gift: That same husband surprised me with tickets to see John Pinette, one of my very favorite comedians on my birthday

4. What do you miss most about being a kid? Not having to worry about bills, taxes, who has to be at what school at what time for what activity and how are they getting home. And playing kick the can. I used to love that game

5. What story does your family always tell about you?
My mom loves to tell the story about how when she was pregnant with me, some nuns came to ask for donations, and the next year those same nuns came back and wanted to see the baby (me) and when they crept up to my room (where I was supposed to be sleeping) I had removed my diaper and had proceeded to spread the contents of said diaper all over every curl in my hair, every crevasse of my ears, in my nose, on the walls.... you get the idea

6. At what age did you consider yourself an adult?
I'll let you know when that happens.

7. What’s one thing you wish you could “un-know”?
What's in scrapple. I freaking LOVE scrapple. I honestly don't CARE that scrapple is made from everything they find on the floor in the pig killing factory. But it would be nice to still believe that scrapple is made out of angel wings, unicorn smiles and leprechaun magic.

8. Where would you like to go on a deam vacation? Hawaii for a month. All expenses paid. My kids could join me for a week. Maybe two if they behave.

9. What is your first memory of being really excited? Waking up in the middle of the night one Christmas Eve to go downstairs to the bathroom and seeing that not only had Santa come, but he HAD brought me the Barbie 3-Story Town House with the working elevator. God I was psyched!

10. What was the first thing you bought with your own money? Records. I remember buying 45's and I believe my first album was Queen: News of the World

11. What was the last experience that made you a stronger person? Moving from NJ to WV and meeting a bazillion new friends, taking a job way out of my ordinary and beginning a blog

Next up, Jenn's questions:

1. Who in your life do you most wish to be like? Sweet Brown. Because when it comes to bullshit, 'ain't nobody got time for that'.

2. Other than parenting, what is your greatest
accomplishment? Marrying my best friend and having a tremendous amount of love in my heart for him after being together for 129 years.

3. If you had your choice of living in a region
where it’s either only cold all the time or only hot all the time, which would
you pick? Hot. Maybe. No, cold. No, I hate ice. Definitely hot. Unless my air conditioner breaks. Then definitely cold.

5. How old were you when you got your first
paying job? When I was 9, I worked at my mom and step-dad's mini golf course at the Brigantine Castle. They paid me $25 a week and I always wanted to get paid in $1 bills because it looked like such a lot of money!

6. What do you like the best about where you
live? The people are amazing. I've made so many awesome friends. And the area is beautiful.

7. What is the one place you’d most like to
visit before you die? Ireland.

8. What one piece of knowledge, that you’ve
learned from your own experience, do you find most important to pass on to your
child? Think before you jump into something. ALWAYS trust that little voice in your head that's telling you this may not be the best idea you've ever had. That voice is almost always right.

9. Early bird or night owl? A little of both. I can hang until around 11:30, maybe midnight before I become a zombie. And I don't mind getting up around 8:30 or 9:00.

10. What is your favorite meal to cook? (opening a can of spaghetti o’s counts) Macaroni, cheese and ham casserole has been a big hit lately so I'm going to say that. Yes, that's what I'm going to say is my favorite (this week)

11. If you found out you were expecting a child,
how would you react? Before or after I threw myself in front of a freight train?

Ok it is NOT mandatory to answer all of these questions so if you want to pick one or two (or 22, whatever blows your dress up, dude) go ahead and answer them in the comments. I'll learn a little about you! And again a HUGE thank you to Jenn and Kimbo. Please go check out their sites and see for yourselves how awesome they are!

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

So I've met a really cool lady named Joy who has just recently started blogging. I know exactly how she feels with being a new kid because last summer I was that new kid, asking questions, trying to figure out ways to get my blog noticed. I was so lucky to have found some really helpful bloggers, big guns, in my opinion, who were full of ideas and suggestions to get me out of the starting block. Jen at People I Want To Punch In The Throat, and Jenn at Jenn's Blogspot, My Daily Jenn-isms were both instrumental in helping me get Snarkfest off the ground. So I'm going to pay the favor forward by helping out a fellow blogger and I'm putting up a guest post for her on today's edition of Snarkfest. It doesn't hurt that the post is funny as shit, so I present to you a guest post from Joy at ComfyTown Chronicles. She uses the word "mayhap" which has always secretly been one of my favorite words to say, so you know, in my book, she's aces! Enjoy.

Scatterbrain’s Guide to
Perpetual Motion

If
you work(ed) in an office, you’re probably familiar with the guy (yes, or GIRL) who always does things the
hard way. You think he’s new, or maybe dropped on his head as a child, so you
help him out. Like that Dane Cook bit, if he goes totally postal, maybe he’ll
spare you. You show him a faster, more efficient way to do a task. But no, he’s
DEAD SET on doing it the much harder way. He could be keeping himself busy,
could have a hidden agenda, or just bat-crap crazy. Who knows?

In
my role as Head of Sanitation and Sustenance in ComfyTown, apparently I am that
THAT GUY. Based on my natural ability to stretch out simple chores to all-day
projects, I am That Guy, level Jedi Master. Maybe subconsciously I feel this is
some kind of job security, perhaps I feel nothing worthwhile is easy. Or mayhap
I am a masochist. (That would actually
explain a lot…)

If
you like to create arbitrary challenges for yourself, are bat-crap crazy (no judgment here, I’m WITH you) or just
want to convince your significant other you are way too busy to possibly have
any more children, I’ve got you covered. I’ll show you how to make household jobs
take longer. I’m talking Tollway-Construction-Worker “we have to sweep all day
to use up our budget” kind of take longer. Just follow me around. So to speak.
Actually don’t do that, I’m easily distracted. Read my blog, like my Facebook page, and start with this list I put together of everyday crap that I do. Were
this list complete, the internet would be FULL, so thanks to David Letterman’s
good ole “Top Ten List,” here are the TOP ways to do things the hard way and
battle that winter cabin-fever boredom.

1.Never
put anything back where it belongs, so you have to look long and hard for
things.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Not sure if this is big news or not. I guess it all depends on how you look at things. But I've posted my very first blog on BlogHer, which is a HUGE site for bloggers. It's like the mother ship for female bloggers and I figured, what do I have to lose? Why not post something, run it up the proverbial flagpole and see if anyone salutes. I guess only time will tell. For now, you can read my post at this link: Getting Rid of Cable? Are You Kidding Me??

Who knows? It may end up lost in a sea of other blogs, a tiny fish in a giant blogger's ocean, but you don't know unless you take that first step, right? So go read and tell me what you think.

Please go to the link, vote for Snarkfest and help me get into the Top 25. Vote every day. I've got cookies in the oven and I'm baking them for YOU for voting for me. If you're trying to lose weight, I'll take one for the team and EAT those cookies for you so YOU don't gain the extra weight. The things I do because I love you.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Well HELLO THERE! I know that you were expecting a beautiful blog post from your beloved Teri from Snarkfest Blog but she allowed me to come over here to play today! Don't worry she'll be back right after I'm done! I didn't hold her hostage or anything! =) I just hope I don't bore you too much!

So I've been going through a lot these past few months and I've been kinda neglecting my own blog but I thought that maybe this guest post could cheer me up and of course some Teri love! Thank you so much Teri for letting me come by and chat with your followers for a bit! I am so honored you let me come through! I hope I make you proud!

Feeling Like You're Never Good Enough

It's just one of those things that I think we all go through. Whether it's in the work place or at home. I feel that we all struggle with this from time to time. We try and put on this fake facade of how strong we are or how we have a handle on things and we don't need any help but what we truly don't realize is that EVERYONE goes through it. So how do I go through my tough times? How to feel like you ARE good enough?! I'm no expert but I am an expert at feeling like a failure!

Do what you do best! What is it that ONE thing that you feel that you excel at? Or better yet if you can't even think of one ask a loved one and they'll help you. After you figure it out do MORE of it so that you can feel better about what you've accomplished for that day!

Take it one day at a time! Don't think too far ahead. Just focus on how to make that ONE day better!

Don't try to do TOO many things at once. You'll get side tracked and forget what you were trying to accomplish which is to make yourself feel better!

Ask a loved one! They'd be more than willing to give you some love and encouragement!

I love to write about things from life, and relationships to food and maybe sometime as technical as photography. I can't promise that I'll make you laugh or cry but I'd love to go through life with yah! If you liked my post, please come visit me over at www.chewylicious.com or on twitter @chewyleecious. Hope to see you around!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

In today's blog post, I'm going to share with you some of the funniest and most awesome people I don't know in person. How about that? I wish I knew them, and I do hope, one day, to meet a great many of them. But for now, I'll just have to admire them from afar. In no particular order:

Joy from Evil Joy Speaks. Joy and I have become fast friends. She's got 4 kids, a husband, and 2 pups. She lives in the Arctic Circle known as Wisconsin and has really taken to snowboarding. She posts about her life and her kids and her hubby and she never disappoints.

Michelle from You're My Favorite Today. Michelle has an obsessionfascination really likes Scott Baio and was so excited when he favorited one of her tweets she nearly peedexploded lost her mind. She and I have similar tastes in men (I loved Chachi more than Joanie did, just sayin') as you can see from her post on George Clooney. She never fails to make me laugh.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Ok, I'm going to start this off by saying I breastfed both my kids. I have nothing against breastfeeding. I have nothing against breastfeeding in public. Are you with me so far? Good. What I DO have a problem with is this new doll, the Breast Milk Baby:

Weird pic courtesy of cdn.trendhunterstatic.com

Our daughters grow up way too fast as it is. I want my kids to stay kids for as long as possible. I want them to enjoy their youth while they can and NOT be forced to grow up too fast. But this doll??? This is just beyond me. There's not enough snark in the world to let you know how effing ridiculous I think this is. What in the wide world of sports were the manufacturers thinking? What mother would BUY this atrocity for her daughter? Oh and if we're being PC here, why not market it to boys too? Boys won't ever have the pleasure of having their little nipples chewed on by a hungry baby, so why not put a little BOY on the box and use the slogan: Now even little Tommy can pretend he's little Mommy!!

Seriously, this is an actual paragraph from the website:

The Breast Milk Baby simulates the breast-feeding process by including a fashionable halter-top that a young girl can put on like a vest and when she brings the Breast Milk Baby doll’s mouth up to the pretty flower decoration on the vest the doll makes a soft, suckling sound. The two flowers on the halter are positioned where the nipples would be and when the mouth of the doll is brought close to the embedded sensors in the flower, the baby makes motions and suckling sounds. After the feeding motion the doll makes crying sounds to be burped and swaddled.Isn't that discriminatory against young boys? Why not have Cowboys and Indians on the fashionable halter-top simulating nipples instead of flowers? (Oh, because Cowboys and Indians aren't PC anymore either.) Why can't boys AND girls breastfeed? Oh yeah, because NEITHER of them can produce breast milk. Because they are CHILDREN. And CHILDREN shouldn't have to grow up too fast. When I was a kid, Baby Alive was all the rage. She peed and pooped after you fed her. I was completely grossed out by that. Why? Because I was a KID. What kid do you know WANTS to see a dirty, shitty, smelly diaper? And what child has gone to his/her mother and said "Wow Mommy, I wish I could produce milk, I wish MY breasts would become so engorged with milk that they feel like two giant freaing water balloons on the verge of bursting, I wish I could have milk leaking out of my boobies at the most inopportune times. I wish I knew what it felt like to have a baby with razor-sharp teeth gnawing at two of the most sensitive parts of my body." I'll tell you who. NO ONE.

And on another really bizarre subject, sort of related, this was brought to my attention the same night this Breast Milk Baby was: Woman Breastfeeds Her PugYou read that right. From the Huffington Post Weird News, this woman didn't breastfeed her own children (and there is NOTHING wrong with NOT breastfeeding your babies either, so don't get your panties in a bunch) but she DID feed her pug, Spider, for 2 years.

Weirder pic courtesy of gawkerassets.com

Seriously. I cannot make this shit up. Her pug. She breastfed her pug. What is the world coming to???In other boob news, how about the 51-year old woman in Washington who reportedly used her breasts to try to kill her boyfriend in a fight. And apparently she was pretty successful, seeing as he died. Of suffocation. That's a new way of using sex as a weapon. Death by boobage.

And, dear friends, I leave you with one last, bizarre story (as if those three up there weren't bizarre enough for you. How about Nermin Keating swallowing her dentures? Yep. Swallowed all 11 of her teefies. And the doctors didn't catch it. FOUR times. The first three times, the doctors told her it was a lung infection. One of my favorite parts of the article is when the daughter, Umit (yes, Umit. Do you think I'm smart enough to make up that name? You give me too much credit) said that after the first doctor said it was a lung infection, her mother continued to have problems, 'especially when eating'. Really?? The woman has no top teeth!!!! I'd call that a problem! But lucky for Nermin (really? Nermin??) apparently, the fourth time is the charm, because some bright young doctor finally was able to stick some forceps down her old gullet and grab those dentures and pull them to safety.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Sometimes the craziest ideas hit you at the weirdest times. I have admitted to you 3 readers before that I'm suffering from writer's block. I've got nothing in the tank. No fresh, hot, original ideas. Nuttin' honey. I sit in front of my computer and think: "Ok there's gotta be SOMETHING to write about, right?" but there's no response. So I'm watching The Today Show this morning and those crazy Kardashians were on, discussing Kim's pregnancy and their TV show: "We're 2 Rich Girls With Enough Money To Buy A Small African Country, So Naturally You Want To Watch Us and Our Extremely Important Lives!" To say I was disgusted would be an understatement. I saw this meme on FB the other day:

This is the perfect description for those pimples on the asses of society, those Kardashians. Then I thought, what good do they do? What good, positive things can I say about Kim Kardashian? She keeps the botox industry alive? Her real dad defended OJ? Hmmm, what else. What positive things does this woman contribute to society? And then it hit me. Like a freaking Mack truck, it hit me and I knew what I wanted to write about. Real celebrities vs. fake celebrities. Real people who do real things. Real people who do GOOD things, and who ask nothing in return. More specifically, my friend Holly Morgan Frye.

Photo courtesy of Shepherd University

Holly has never appeared on the cover of People Magazine (nor does she want to). She's never walked the red carpet at a Hollywood premiere (nor does she want to). Much like Kim Kardashian, Holly's never starred in a movie or on Broadway. But unlike Kim Kardashian, Holly has done GOOD things for society and she's does them humbly, without fanfare, and without looking for the spotlight. No, quite the opposite. Holly would be just as happy sitting in her living room, working on her tablet, wearing pajamas and drinking wine (that I've brought over) and eating cheese (that I've brought over) and watching a movie (you guessed it....) than having people fawn over her, telling her how amazing she is and snapping thousands of pictures of her in a pair of Jimmy Choos and an haute couture gown.

Kim Kardashian has donated her clothes to charity. Holly Frye has donated tens of thousands of hours to charity. Holly is the Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs for Student Engagement at Shepherd University. She works the front lines with students and faculty for the good of the community. When Holly calls me, I know I'm in for something. Whether it be to come over and watch a movie (bring your own wine, cheese and movie) or to help bag up 40,000 lbs of sweet potatoes for food banks, soup kitchens and shelters throughout our county. I've never been invited to go help cancer patients with Kim Kardashian, but every year I gladly accept the call from Holly when she asks me to come help out with Relay for Life at Shepherd University.

I could be way off base here but I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that NONE of those Kardashians have ever built a house. God forbid they should ruin a perfectly good mani/pedi! Holly takes a huge crew of college students away every year for 'Alternative Spring Break' where they spend their spring break not drinking in bars and partying, but building a house for Habitat for Humanity.

I will never meet Kim and Kanye's baby (thank God!) nor do I want to. But I have the pleasure of calling Holly's youngest son MY son from another mother. Our kids are best friends, and that's how I came to meet Holly. And she's grown to be one of my dearest friends here in Shepherdstown. Think Lucy and Ethel. But without the disasters. Or the bongos. Holly makes me laugh whenever we're together and she never takes herself too seriously. In the past she's done more than any one person should have to do in name of Relay for Life. She's kissed a pig. And she's taken pie in the face. From me.

I got to Pie the Frye for Relay for Life

For those of you who have read all the way to this point, I want to tell you my favorite Holly Morgan Frye quote, and this quote means more to me than anything in movie or a TV show or a magazine, because it's real. 2 years ago at Relay, it was about midnight and we were in Holly's office taking a 10 minute break from all the festivities, and the police chief called Holly to say that there was a complaint from a resident who lived near the campus where Relay was being held. Apparently, it was too loud. When were we going to stop making so much noise on campus that night? Holly, without missing a beat exclaimed: "When we find a cure for cancer."

Thursday, January 10, 2013

With thanks to Dennis Johnston from whom this video on Facebook came. I don't even care that it's taking up most of my head over there on the right. You can't watch this video without cracking a smile:

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Since I've seen a bunch of other bloggers doing this, and since I'm a newbie to all of this, I figure it must be cool to come up with an end of the year list of one's most widely read blog posts of 2012, right? And far be it for me to not hang out with the cool kids. I'm all about cool. Does anyone even SAY cool these days? I don't know. But I do know that you guys really seemed to enjoy my ride on the Character Assassination Carousel from Ninja Mom, where I skewered We're Going on a Bear Hunt. You guys also seemed to enjoy reading my take on Positive Panties. I'll let you guys read the list yourselves and if you know someone who could use a good laugh, or a pair of Positive Panties, share this blog with them. And thanks for your support. Hopefully 2013 will be full of laughs, sarcasm and heavy doses of snark!! So now without further ado, from the home office in Terre Haute, Indiana, here are the top 5 blog posts from Snarkfest this year:

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

To quote my friend Tracy at Momaical, "The Epistolarians is a group of kick-ass women writers, who are letting the world know how they think, one letter at a time." In that vein, I've written a letter to Nicki Minaj.

Ms. Minaj in all her gumdropped glory.
Pic courtesy of Wikimedia

You can read the full letter at The Epistolarians. Then you can tell me what you think. Do you like her? Hate her? Think she's a big old bowl of nut sauce? Let me know what you think.